People who know me, or have read any small amount of my work, understand my extreme concerns about long-term cell phone use. My last
Editorial on the subject was driven by work out of Israel that saw cell division taking place in heavy users of the technology.
Israel is a good location for cell phone investigations. The country, as a whole, was an early and heavy adopter and we should certainly expect any affects of long-term phone usage to first emerge out of such a territory.
And that is what may now have happened.
The February 15, 2008 issue of the
American Journal of Epidemiology published the
work of ten researchers in Israel, led by Siegal Sadetzki (Gertner Institute, Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer and the Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University); work that had been first disclosed (by early subscription access) on December 6, 2007.
The heart of the results, from a fairly decent-sized sample, questioned the cell phone use by 500 patients who had a mouth cancer with benign and malignant tumors of the parotid gland, which is the largest salivary gland in humans, located between the jaw and ear – in other words, where your phone is normally held. The phone use pattern of these patients, in frequency and duration, was compared to a sample of about 1300 healthy subjects.
The results indicated that use of a cell phone for some hours a day was 50% more likely to cause this form of mouth cancer. Dr Sadetzki said the data also suggested that use in rural areas had a higher risk of mouth cancer, presumably because of the higher transmit power required of the handset to operate successfully with more distant basestations. She also speculated that the greatest effects would be found in really heavy users, and in children. She noted the long latency period of such mouth cancer development has made the results hard to prove – until now. A previous Swedish
study in 2006 found no link between mobile phone use and mouth cancer, but fewer participants – with fewer years of use – were involved.
I, for one, am going to stick with my silly RF engineer viewpoint that anyone who spends several hours a day with a phone against the side of their face is courting long-term hurt. If you’ve got the guts for it here are some oral cancer
photographs. The evidence is only gaining strength. The telecom industry has failed to get protection for their illegal phone and e-mail interception in the US; will there be an attempt to protect them from the lawsuits that will hit them in 10 – 15 years from the victims of RF exposure? The lawyers who have so well protected big tobacco will have to be followed by a new generation protecting big mobile. Act responsibly out there, folks, and keep your hands on the steering wheel…
